PUCALLPA, Peru -- Feeling old? Tired? There is something found around these parts that a lot of people say can help. Men in their retirement years eat it, start new families and swear by it. So do childless women, who drink it and give birth. Found in the Peruvian rain forests, the demand for it is phenomenal. But it isn't some pharmaceutical corporation's answer to Viagra, the impotence drug, nor is it available at a corner drugstore. In fact, an Amazonian witch doctor here must be consulted for a prescription. It's piranha. The bitter-tasting flesh of the fish that have devoured so many villains in jungle B-movies is hailed here as the cure for problems dealing with fertility, virility, even baldness. It is said to be the ultimate aphrodisiac.

"The power of the meat can cure many things," said Flor, a Peruvian witch doctor who specializes in concoctions based on piranha meat. "It is one of the strongest medicines the world has known."The scientific community, of course, scoffs at the anecdotal claims of the supporters of piranha-basedcures. The meat, they say, is acidic, sometimes toxic and utterly without medicinal powers.

"These claims about the power of the piranha fish meat have been around for a very long time, and there has never been any scientific evidence to support it," said Celso Pardo, the dean of a Lima pharmacological institute. "People see an aggressive, macho animal, and they say, `I want to be more like that.' " Such disparaging words do not faze the supporters of the bony fish. Piranha fisherman Miguel Socorro, for example, said his father had been sterile before eating piranha and fathering Socorro and his two siblings. Maria Luisa Quepo, a childless woman near Pulcallpa,gave birth to twins when she was in her 40s afterdrinking a piranha-based brew. And the mayor of anearby village, a widower in his 60s, started a secondfamily with the help of the fish. Countless coupleshere say they've used the seductive powers of thepiranha to spice up otherwise unimaginative marriages. "The people helped by the fish don't need proof fromscientists," said the witch doctor, Flor, whose namemeans "flower" in Spanish. Catching a piranha isn't easy. The best fishermenstart early in the morning by pouring buckets of bloodaround their boats to attract the fish, which gather withsuch ferocity that the water near the boat seems to be boiling. The fishermen slap the waters with their fishing poles to mimic the splashing sounds of an animal in distress -- something that excites the piranha even more. Then they they drop in multipronged hooks baited with chunks of red meat. The piranha just nibble at the meat, but a slight tug at the hook-lines tells the fisherman to jerk the hooks upward, something as likely to snag the fish in the gills or tails as in the mouths, since the piranha do not allow hooks past their razor-sharp teeth. "The process is difficult, but a good fisherman can catch 12 or 15 piranhas before the sun gets too hot," said Socorro, the fisherman. The piranhas sell for a little less than $1 each to witch doctors like Flor, meaning a successful fisherman can make the average weekly wage near Pulcallpa of $16 or so in a little more than a day of fishing. Flor charges about $4.25 for most of his signature brews, which use one or two fish each. "This is one of the most profitable businesses a man can get into near here," Socorro said proudly.

Some of the region's piranha trading takes place at a fish market just outside Pulcallpa. On one edge of the market, away from the tables and mats where more traditional fish are bought and sold, a handful of fishermen and buyers go over the day's piranha catch.Large black-bellied fish are generally worth a little less and are in highest demand by artisans, who make necklaces from the larger-than-normal jaws and teeth to sell to tourists.The meat from a red-bellied piranha, by contrast, is considered potent and is snapped

up by healers. Meat from a baby piranha is thought to start working quicker; pregnant piranhas are used to solve fertility-related problems. According to Flor, medicinal uses of the piranha go back generations, though he said that he personally "discovered" the formulas he uses to make some of his most potent potions. "Medicine in the jungle is always changing, always becoming better, always discovering new cures and powers," Flor said. "The things we can't cure are only because we haven't figured out how yet." But Pardo, the pharmacist, said any power claimed to reside in the fish is purely psychological. "If there's any effect at all, it's due to somebody being convinced it will work," he said, "and then it does." "That's not such a bad thing," he added, "just as long as people don't take it too seriously and start hailing it as the next great miracle cure." Or the next new impotence drug. Whoever is right, the witch doctor or the pharmacist, it makes no difference to people like Quepo, the formerly childless woman who gave birth to twins when she was 43 -- a miracle she attributes to piranha. "I don't understand science, and I don't know why it works, but it does," she said. "Before I took the medicine, my husband and I were alone. Now, thank God, we have two little children."

After 5-hour trip into jungle, I'm at home with witch doctor

The route to the home of the witch doctor known as Flor is long and difficult, but it doesn't discourage visitors. Inside his wooden hut, a sweaty five hours by dugout canoe and foot from the Amazon jungle city of Pucallpa, Flor brews his mysterious potions and medicines for an average of three "clients" a day. "People," he said plainly, "they want what I have." They want it for dozens of reasons. Flor boasts cures for maladies ranging from infertility to baldness, from alcoholism to poor night vision. During a recent visit, Flor told me he could cure me of whatever ailed me. `"You have all your hair," he said, stroking his chin. "Any fertility problems?" I told him I was single, but he wasn't deterred. "Do you have problems shooting an arrow straight?" he asked, a little more desperate. "Do you make too much noise when you walk through the jungle? Do your feet sweat when you sleep?" Flor wasn't what I thought an Amazon witch doctor would be. He wasn't dressed in bright robes, his face wasn't painted in cryptic patterns. In fact, he was virtually indistinguishable from the 60 or so people in the nearby village of Nuevo Destino -- Spanish for New Destiny -- with his earth-tone clothes and high, Indian cheekbones. His Spanish was fairly articulate, given that it wasn't his native language. The Shapibo Indian language is spoken by most people in the area. The route to his hut included a maze of minor river tributaries -- some of which had to be blazed by breaking off or slipping under branches from fast-growing Amazon trees -- and then a muddy, hourlong walk along an overgrown path. Flor's hut, on the southern edge of Nuevo Destino, looks as if it grew out of the land around it. Weeds sprouted between the unevenly spaced floor and the wooden-and-palm-thatched roof seemed to absorb the tube of smoke rising up from the flame Flor used to heat the potion he was making for me. The brew he concocted for me included an ounce or two of piranha meat along with a ground-up mixture twigs, herbs, powders and some drops from an odd assortment of bottles that Flor kept on a shelf with the skull of a huge Caiman. The gritty potion tasted bitter, but Flor and my guide urged me to drink it down as they chatted in Shapibo. After I took a few hesitant sips, Flor took the clay pot back and smiled a toothless smile. He declared me almost cured. Of what? I asked Flor and my guide. They looked at me as if I should have perhaps asked for a cure for being dimwitted. A few seconds passed, and Flor spoke slowly. "You will find love," he said, "within 30 days." That time has nearly passed, but I haven't given up hope.